Every two weeks Nuno Pinheiro and the KDE Oxygen Icons team will be publishing a new usability survey online to get feedback from users on the look and feel of icons. In particular, the Oxygen team is looking for feedback from individuals that have had no exposure to KDE, so if you're at home or at work, poke your friends and family and have them complete the survey, or simply take the survey yourself. The current survey is on icons for the KDE 4 port of K3b which is currently underway. So if you have a moment, grab someone and complete the K3b Icons Survey now.

Comments

Such a neat survey...
I was kind of disapointed it ended so quickly :P

Although it kind of misses the situation when no icon that suits the case is found. That is, there should be some option of "not sure" or these 2 could do it and maybe a text to add some comment like "that eraser is too close to the CD and hard to distinguish (or needs some more contrast)"

Anyway, good job and hope to see more of these!
( Maybe there should be a usability-tester program to test current applications for specific situations. Imagine a usability survey you could take when using KDE4 that asked you to do things in some application - like Amarok, etc. - and then would upload the result so the devs could know what is and not working... )

if you think absolutely no icon fits the profile move along and click next...
The test actually times how long it takes you to click the icon, and that is part of the quality level the icon gets.
So if you are undecided and take long to chose a icon that gets recorded....
Comments, so far we had about 2300 people taking the test, reading every comment would become an incredible tiresome work.

Apliki People did a awesome job in providing valuable meaningful automatic data out of the simple test.

The test is short because we don't want to be annoying to people taking the test, it should be simple and fun to do.

It should be explicit that you can choose "no icon" by pressing next.
You could add a choice "no icon matches the description". It may be the same as clicking directly on next but at least it is explicit.

Yep you are right.
I would have liked to comment, too. So I do it here: I think the idea with the eraser is really good, but that thing is so small in that icon. I had not at all recognised it at first. If u would tell me it was a magnet, I had believed it too.

Actually, Ozone is the default, and:
1. Allows for different titlebar vs. window colours;
2. Allows users to set the width of the borders;
3. Gives a clean and consistent look with the rest of the Oxygen widget theme;
4. Lets the user see which is the active window in a clear and attractive manner, even if the titlebar colours are blended with the widget colours.

If YOU don't find it an attractive window decoration, I think it's safe to say that you are one of a minority - in fact, many Gnome advocates even state the attractiveness of KDE 4 being it's only true benefit (usually in the means of, "it's all looks and no stability" or some-such rubbish).

For those of you interested in the way the results are being computed and displayed, just take a look here: http://www.usability-methods.com/en/howdoesitwork (The results are Step 3). This is just a small demo-study (not the actual k3b Icon Test), but it should give you an impression about how detailed the information is, that is being generated by the test.

We probably cannot make this link publicly available for the results of the k3b Test, as with that many people looking at the results our servers are most likely to break - because the results are at the moment calculated live. But I guess Nuno will communicate the actual results in some form :)